The Cells at Work Anime Teaches Us About Our Bodies!

J-List is busy preparing for one of our favorite times of the year: the San Diego Comic-Con! As usual, we will be at booth 4929, loaded with lots of awesome anime figures and plush toys and fun grab bags, our new full-color J-List T-shirt, the best visual novels anywhere, plus some great “dolphin polisher” toys we’ve prepared for you. We’ll also have limited 2018 SDCC Megumi pins and stickers you can only get from our booth, so stop by before we run out. Can’t make it to the show? We’ve got a very special coupon code for you, through Sunday: get $10 off $40 or more on all books, manga, artbooks, how-to-draw books and “ecchi” manga/doujinshi, automatically! No code to enter!

One of my jobs at J-List is to try to identify which series will be popular in a new anime season, so I can tell our (generally non-otaku) Japanese staff what products to be on the lookout for to post to the site, and also to know which shows have “buzz” among fans. It’s possible to measure this popularity by checking how many fanart images are posted to Pixiv, or by seeing what memes are bouncing around the Internet. And one of the most popular shows this season seems like it’s going to be the kawaii-but-weird Cells At Work!/Hataraku Saibou.

The show is about, well, you. The cells in your body, that is, which are represented by characters who work hard to do their appointed jobs every day. It follows two main characters: AE3803, a newly hired red blood cell (voiced by Tu-tu-ru queen Hanazawa Kana) who runs around delivering oxygen to various parts of the body, and U-1146, the deadpan but capable white blood cell who protects the body’s veins against invading bacteria. Along the way they encounter many other cells in the body, including killer T cells, microphage, and dendritic cells, plus the irresistibly cute platelets, which cause blood to clot. Cells at Work! is a fresh anime concept that’s a lot of fun, sort of a cross between One Punch Man and that strange bacteria anime Moyashimon, and you should totally watch it. And best of all, the medical parts of the show are accurate, which gives us a reason to hit the gym and get healthy. Do it for her!

We love to get new anime figures for the site, and the staff has been working extra hard to find Hello figures for you. Browse all the new items, including Aqua from Konosuba, Aoba from New Game plus a gorgeous Tony Taka figure!

About the author

Peter Payne

I live in Japan and I run J-List, an anime shop famous for shimapan and Tentacle Grape. I love being able to bring Japanese culture to the world.